28 PROCEEDINGS OF THE 



branch of technical study, or it may all become the junk of 

 abandoned youthful enthusiasms. It seems to me that of all 

 things, the most lasting and refreshing, the most liable to lead 

 to some permanent good to the individual, is the collecting of 

 natural objects, for it takes the devotee away over the hills and 

 out under the wide sky, and therein lies much of the inspiration 

 of the natural history collector — the incipient state of mind that 

 makes a good naturalist. The butterfly net, the fishing for 

 species rather than sport, the small-bore gun and the dust-shot 

 load — what meanings they have in the life of the mind! In the 

 days of which I am writing about it was not uncommon for 

 men to go shooting in the fall of the year, and a variety of the 

 smaller birds, Meadow Larks, Robins, Blackbirds and Flickers, 

 fell to their guns. Nor was this slaughter considered so dia- 

 bolical a crime as it is to-day. And these were ordinarily 

 humane gentlemen, mark you! I remember that Cousin George 

 Lawrence went robin-shooting every autumn for years, and 

 probably my very first interest in birds came when as a small 

 chap I used to pick up Red-headed Woodpeckers, Flickers, 

 Bluejays and Cedarbirds that my father shot on the hills near 

 Baltimore. Very well I remember the Wild Pigeon that he 

 killed out of a small fiock that flew over us on one of these 

 occasions. This going afield with a gun was, I think, a survival 

 of old pioneer days. I am glad that these days are past, but I 

 am glad also that I was born before they had wholly disappeared. 

 The camera has come, and these recent collections of bird pic- 

 tures are full of wonderful interest, but among the formative in- 

 fluences of my youth, and in the days of "Chris" Wood, out- 

 door photography was but an ill-developed art. A man is in 

 large measure always a part of his youthful fancies and his 

 youthful environment. 



I reaped many a good harvest from "Chris" Wood's gun, 

 and my bird collection grew apace, but his data were not with- 

 out question. He never kept a note or labeled a specimen. 

 The locality and approximate date of a specimen's capture were 

 generally all that I could get out of "Chris." The peculiar 

 hybrid Swallow came into my hands a few days after it was 

 shot, and also the second specimen of Brewster's Warbler. 



